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The results go beyond NASCAR’s own operations and extend across its value chain, through work with partners and suppliers to put together the largest recycling program in sports. Coca-Cola Recycling and Miller Coors recycled 14 million bottles and cans totaling over 1,000 tons. Goodyear spearheaded a responsible recycling program for tires used on NASCAR stock cars, recycling approximately 121,000 tires on NASCAR’s top three national series each year.

What I found more surprising than the NASCAR stats, though, was the abject shock from my green friends when I shared the information. It is precisely these kinds of "purple issues," combining the interests of Blue and Red States alik,e that will allow us to find the compromises (that's right, I used the c-word) we need to break political deadlock and take effective action to solve some of society's biggest problems.

NASCAR Green is purple precisely because it is "oxymoronic." It highlights common ground, letting us come out from behind the barricades to see the other side as having merit and something to contribute to the solution.

As the national political parties continue hammering away at each other's differences, these purple issues give us a chance to play off our shared values. That's also precisely what we hope to accomplish through the upcoming UnConvention at the COMMIT!Forum on October 2-3 in New York City. We've gathered a whole host of red, blue, green, and purple thinkers, including NASCAR's Michael Lynch, to take on crony capitalism, sustainable economic growth, energy security, and more.

Come to the UnConvention and join NASCAR's Lynch, Reagan's budget director David Stockman, Clinton's chief economic advisor Rob Shapiro, American Electric Power CEO Nick Akins, the Beyond Oil Campaign's Michael Marx, and let's work together to find more "purple oxymorons" so we can stop admiring our problems and start solving them.